The EU-US data transfer plan took several tough hits over the past week [...].

The European Commission pushed back a deadline it set for itself to finalize the agreement by end of May to sometime before “this summer,” but isn’t giving up on the agreement struck with Washington in February. Ruling out any renegotiation in the wake of pushback from EU national regulators and the Parliament, EU officials say they’re going to implement the accord, knowing that court challenges are inevitable. Those challenges could take years to get through the court system. [...]

Uncertainty around the future of trans-Atlantic data transfers leaves more than 4,000 companies on both sides of the ocean that had signed up to safe harbor in limbo. Champions of the data pact reacted with frustration to the latest political setbacks in Europe. [...]

The European Parliament’s resolution on the privacy shield acknowledges its improvements over the safe harbor pact, but pointed out that U.S. intelligence services can still snoop on EU citizens’ data in ways that “does not meet the stricter criteria of necessity and proportionality as required under the Charter [of Fundamental Rights]” — one of the reasons safe harbor didn’t survive the beating at the European court. [...]

http://www.politico.eu/article/privacy-shield-dead-on-arrival/